No. of Recommendations: 8
Dean Baker intro:
Senator Grassley uncovered the fact that Barack Obama's Justice Department opened up an investigation into the firm Biden's son worked for and the investigation was closed under Trump!
Empty Wheel:
Hunter told potential business partners he would not lobby for them, as he told Vuk Jeremic in 2016 when they were discussing gas deals in Mexico: “[A]s I have also said many times I won’t engage in I [advocating] on your behalf with my father or anyone else in the USG.”
Viser, who seems to think he is clever, ends his piece with an exchange between Hunter and his business partner, Devon Archer. Archer complains that Joe Biden didn’t step in and make Archer’s legal troubles go away.
>>“Why did your dad’s administration appointees arrest me and try to put me in jail? Just curious,” Archer asked in a text message, in an exchange found on a copy of Hunter’s hard drive and verified by a person familiar with it. “Why would they try and ruin my family and destroy my kids and no one from your family’s side step in and at least try to help me. I don’t get it.”
Archer declined to comment on the exchange.
“Buddy are you serious,” Hunter responded, going on to explain the role of an independent Justice Department and the need for checks and balances.
“It’s democracy. Three co equal branches of government,” he wrote. “You are always more vulnerable to the overreach of one of those Co equal branches when you are in power.”<<
Viser apparently didn’t find space — not in 4,800 words — to mention what Chuck Grassley and Scott Brady just revealed: According to Grassley, in 2016, while Biden was Vice President and his kid was on the board of Burisma, DOJ opened a corruption investigation into Mykola Zlochevsky.
[I]n December 2019, the FBI Washington Field Office closed a “205B” Kleptocracy case, 205B-[redacted] Serial 7, into Mykola Zlochevsky, owner of Burisma, which was opened in January 2016 by a Foreign Corrupt Practices Act FBI squad based out of the FBI’s Washington Field Office.
Again, according to Grassley, this investigation was opened when Biden was VP and Hunter was on the board of Burisma. It was closed (according to Grassley) in December 2019, even as Trump defended himself against impeachment by claiming that it was important to investigate claims of corruption related to Burisma.
https://www.emptywheel.net/2023/11/18/what-matt-vi... 